For the purposes of the present application, the term “low-voltage” (LV) relates to voltages lower than 1 kV AC and 1.5 kV DC.
Low-voltage electric installations normally include switching devices, such as automatic circuit breakers, disconnectors or contactors, which are conceived to manage operation of specific parts of an electrical system operatively associated therewith.
Typically, switching devices comprise or are operatively associated with auxiliary devices adapted to perform protection functions, control functions and/or monitoring functions.
Said auxiliary devices (commonly known as “protection and control devices”) may be mounted on board said switching devices or, less frequently, arranged as stand-alone devices (e.g. mounted on a switchboard panel).
As is known, protection and control devices often need to communicate with external mobile computerised devices (e.g. a handheld or laptop computers, tablets, smartphones and the like) to carry out some relevant functionalities, e.g. configuring their own protection parameters or locally downloading/uploading stored data.
To this aim, modern protection and control devices are typically provided with a communication port operatively coupleable, in a removable manner, with a corresponding transceiver device adapted to establish a wireless communication channel between the control unit of the protection and control device and an external computerised device.
In currently available solutions, the transceiver device, which in practice works as a dongle, is normally fed by batteries. This poses relevant limitations to its useful operating life as said batteries must necessarily have a relatively small size and therefore cannot store large amount of electric energy.
On the other hand, arranging an internal feeding line in the protection and control device to feed the transceiver device, when this latter is coupled with said communication port (as it occurs in commercially available desktop or laptop computers), results relatively expensive and poses some issues in terms of electric safety.